Regional ports plan meeting to promote cruise tourism

December 30, 2009 at 9:03 am | Posted in Kenya | 1 Comment

The Cruise Indian Ocean Association (CIOA) will host a meeting in Durban in May to market facilities and tourist attractions in the South and East African Indian Ocean.

The two-day forum will provide a meeting point for top cruise line executives and delegates from tourism, hospitality and marine sectors in the sub region, the public relations officials at the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) said in an in house maritime journal, Our Ports, published by the Ports Management Association of East and South Africa (PMAESA).

CIOA was formally established in Mombasa in 2000 to promote cruise tourism and is composed of the port authorities and national tourism organisations in the East and South African sub-region.

Sea-trade event

“The CIOA has pursued the possibility of holding a Seatrade event in the region for sometime and this effort was finally rewarded following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the association and Seatrade Communication Ltd during the Seatrade Europe Convention at Hamburg, Germany,” KPA said.

The objectives of the forum will be to showcase the region as a desirable destination for cruise passengers and to encourage additional deployment of cruise vessels to the region on long term basis, said the communiqué.

Although the CIOA region, which includes among others Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania Zanzibar and South Africa has a great potential, the East Africa region suffers from poor infrastructure to support the cruise ship business.

In Mombasa port for instance, the cruise ships use berth 1 and 2 which are used to handle conventional cargo and vehicles and as such do not have any facility to handle human traffic.

In 2006, the Ministry of Transport shelved plans to construct a modern cruise terminal at Mombasa port after failing to find a strategic partner to invest in the facility.

The terminal plan, contained in the port’s 25-year master plan and its strategic plan of 2004 currently under review would have re-developed the two berths into a world class cruise ship facility.

However, due to the limitation in the number of berths, which are currently being rearranged to handle the growing cargo traffic through the port, maritime experts says that the port will not convert the two berths into cruise terminal.

The first draft of the revised master plan presented to the port stakeholders in June, this year, proposed a cruise terminal in the western side of Port Reitz.

“Timing dependent on the construction of the by-pass to Dongo Kundu and on the development of the cruise liner market,” the master plan said.

Cruise ships calling at the Mombasa ports are also interested in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar and in case there is a problem in any of the three destinations, the cruise liner avoids the entire circuit.

The CIOA region has natural attractions which include Nubian Deserts, Mt Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift Valley.

Other features include the slave markets of Zanzibar, River Nile and Lake Victoria.

The Table Islands and Robinson Islands of South Africa are also common tourists’ destination within the region.

It is estimated that about 14 million people use cruise ships every year.

The peak season is between November and March, during the European winter season.

Cruise calls at Mombasa port has dropped from 20 vessels in the 2005/2006 season to just eight.

The port expects to receive eight to 10 vessels this season, which would start in November and end next April, according to Abercrombie and Kent Kenya director Auni Kanji in an earlier interview.

This compares poorly with the 53 cruise vessels expected between November and April next year in South Africa, which has well established eight ports.

South Africa is hosting the 2010 World Cup in June, next year, that will also be a big boost to the cruise tourism.

Holiday makers

Since cruise holiday makers consider the tourist destination as a package, the CIOA is looking forward for the regional ports to work together and form a cruise circuit.

Apart from infrastructural challenges, a Value Added Tax introduced in mid this year by the Kenyan government on marine and port services will hurt the cruise industry in the East African region.

International cruise ship operators locked horns with KPA recently over the VAT threatening to withdraw their cruise lines from Mombasa, which would also affect Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.

Source: Business Daily Africa (http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/-/539444/832854/-/t133p9/-/)

Climate change robs Mt. Kenya of spectacular glaciers

December 28, 2009 at 8:30 am | Posted in Kenya | Leave a comment

Those with long memories of how Mt. Kenya once stood tall and proud, the peaks covered by glittering glaciers, may have to think again today, when seeing the mountain either from the ground or from the air. Nearly half of the ice mass recorded a hundred years ago has since melted away altogether or is at the very brink of disappearing, while the remaining ice fields have shrunk considerably over the past decades.

Mountain guides have expressed their concerns to the Kenyan media, raising the alarm levels over the impact of climate change so inflicted on Africa by the massive carbon and other emissions of the industrialized world. The other ice caps in eastern Africa on Mt. Kilimanjaro and across the Rwenzori Mountains are also shrinking at a record pace, and it is feared that in a worst-case scenario, the glaciers could be gone anytime between the next 10 to 20 years.

Alongside those facts, communities depending on the mountains as a source of water for domestic use or irrigation – often the only source – are becoming more and more affected, as drawing water from equally-shrinking streams and rivers is becoming a daily struggle for them.

Thankfully good old Hemingway wrote his “Snow on Kilimanjaro” when that most famous of snow cover was still there and when the ice cap was still what it was supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan government defined the initial start-up cost to combat the fallout of climate change already visible at US$3 billion, which will eventually rise to US$20 billion, if the country is to adopt green technologies and repair the damages already done to forests and other ecosystems through extreme weather conditions.

Kenya, as the whole of Africa did, prepared for the Copenhagen Summit through widespread consultations with civil society organizations, green groups, environmentalists, and conservationists to come up with a country strategy, which will also be part of the regional strategy on climate change the East African Community as a whole is developing and will be presenting to the developed world with a bill attached to it.

Source: eTurboNews (http://www.eturbonews.com/13493/climate-change-robs-mt-kenya-spectacular-glaciers)

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